


Experiments in Baby-Sitting

by earlgreytea68



Series: Scotch [17]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-16
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/722316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has agreed to baby-sit. Sherlock thinks John agrees to the silliest things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experiments in Baby-Sitting

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes my nephew watches this cartoon about insects. I don't even remember what the thing is called. But I remember watching this episode with him where this spider lady had to baby-sit, and her spider husband was all sulky about it, and I was like, "This is basically a Sherlock fanfic." That's what I do when I baby-sit, I write Sherlock fanfics about cartoon insects.
> 
> Anyway, this fic was written because of that and it was written almost a year ago. I was holding it in reserve, thinking there would come a time when SSH was finished posting and I would need more things to post. Except now it's turned out that, when SSH is finished, I'm going to go right into the baseball AU, and, oh, not to mention that I am 100+ pages into an epic wrap-up of the Lettersverse, and I feel like this stuff needs to all be posted before S3 airs, which means I now have a surplus of things to post in a limited amount of time, so, you know, brace yourselves for that.
> 
> Why in particular am I posting this fic now? Because, if you follow me on Tumblr, then you know that I went crazy a few nights ago and started writing a fic about a clone baby. WHAT IS MY HEAD I DON'T EVEN KNOW. But, if the clone baby fic ends up being A Thing, which it might, then I didn't want this particular fic to get lost in clone baby shuffle, because I'm actually rather fond of this silly little fic. So I'm posting it now, before clone baby develops too much of a mind of its own.
> 
> In my head, this fits into the Scotchverse, although Mycroft and Lestrade never make an appearance, and you definitely don't need to have read any of Scotch to get this.
> 
> Thank you to flawedamythyst, who beta'd and Britpicked on short notice.

John made an effort to maintain things in his life that were not Sherlock. 

Sherlock hated this. 

John knew Sherlock hated this, knew that Sherlock stewed and sulked whenever he noticed that John had left the flat and was apparently doing things that didn’t involve Sherlock with people who weren’t Sherlock. But Sherlock was easily ignored. John had made an art form of it. 

Sherlock, of course, was equally adept at ignoring John, and John figured he never had more than even odds that Sherlock would pay attention to or remember any of the desultory details of everyday life that John told him. On the day when the toilet had been out of commission, John had literally had to litter the path to the loo with curious runes and newspaper clippings of random happenings, a puzzle that distracted Sherlock long enough to allow the plumber to finish his work. Had John merely said to him, _You can’t use the toilet today, you have to go to Mrs. Hudson’s flat, the plumber is coming this afternoon_ , he would have received a frantic telephone call from Mrs. Hudson about flooding and arrived home to find Sherlock draped on the sofa and confused about the commotion. 

The fact that John unabashedly loved him precisely for this casual chaos that he would wreak—that John _knew_ he would wreak—said more about John than John cared to consider. 

Because he knew that Sherlock likely wasn’t going to pay attention to what John was about to tell him, John placed a casserole in the oven and wrote a note that he sellotaped to the oven door. “Gas Mark 4 for 45 minutes,” he wrote, and then, in all capitals and underlined three times, “USE OVEN GLOVES TO REMOVE FROM OVEN.” He then drew an arrow to the oven gloves he left on the kitchen counter. He then wrote the same note (minus the arrow) in a rudimentary code that Sherlock might be more inclined to break than a straight English note and stuck it to the fridge. 

Then he walked out to the sitting room, where Sherlock was slouched deep in his chair, contemplating the empty fireplace. 

“I’m leaving now,” he said. “I’ve left you dinner in the oven, you just have to heat it up. I’ve left you instructions how to do it. And for God’s sake, use the oven gloves to take it out of the oven, don’t use this as an opportunity to test the heat conducting properties of lettuce leaves or the human ear, okay? Sherlock.”

Sherlock grunted and did not look away from the fireplace. John thought the odds that he was going to remember this conversation were no higher than twenty percent. 

“I shouldn’t be late,” John told him, but he didn’t even bother to wait for a reply because it would be a waste of time. 

The text came when he’d been in the cab roughly five minutes. _Come home at once. SH._ And then, sliding in immediately afterward, _Please_ , because Sherlock had apparently listened to John’s lecture on “please” and “thank you.” 

_Why?_ John texted back. 

_Need data on fingernail growth. SH_

John sighed. _Then go to the bedroom and get it. You left it on the bedside table._

_Where are you? SH_

_Mike’s._

_Also need to collect fresh data on fingernail growth. SH_

_The nail clippers are in the freezer._

_See you soon. SH_

John gritted his teeth. _I’m not coming home. I’m going to Mike’s._

_Miss you lots. SH_

This actually made John laugh. Sherlock was hilarious when he was in a manipulative mood. John wanted to point out that Sherlock hadn’t said a single word to him since he’d arrived home from work, but he didn’t want Sherlock to think he was angry about that, because he genuinely wasn’t, so he wrote back, _I can’t come home._

_Why not? SH_

John was still in the middle of typing his reply when the next text came in, because Sherlock was a much faster texter than John thought he could ever hope to be. 

_Quite sure I’ll be able to unbuckle your belt using just my teeth this time. SH_

John shook his head. He texted, _I’m baby-sitting Mike’s kids._

There was a long enough pause before he received the next text that he almost put the mobile down. He did check the path the cabbie was taking, because he didn’t trust London cabbies. For obvious reasons. 

_Where are you? SH_

John knitted his eyebrows together. _I just told you._

_Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not baby-sitting. SH_

John frowned. _Yes, I am._ And then, _Why is that so difficult to believe? I’m capable of watching two small children for a few hours. I’m a doctor._

_You never told me you were baby-sitting. SH_

_Yes, I did, multiple times._

_When are you coming home? SH_

_A few hours. Not late._

_What am I supposed to eat? SH_

_I left a casserole in the oven for you, with cooking directions._ He sent the message, then, _Please don’t get inventive with the cooking._

His mobile was silent. John supposed that Sherlock was checking the veracity of what John had just texted. 

The cab pulled to a stop and John paid his fare and was walking up to Mike’s front door when the mobile chimed again. 

_What is this about oven gloves?_ it read. 

Unsigned. John smiled. Sherlock must have been really thrown to fail to even sign his text. And John didn’t know that that particular text required any response on his part. He pocketed his mobile and smiled congenially at Mike as he opened the door. 

***

Mike had a three-year-old daughter, Anna, and a five-year-old son, Ian, and they were polite and well-behaved. John honestly didn’t have much experience with children, but Mike had been desperate to find a baby-sitter so he could attend a family wedding, and the usual baby-sitters had all been busy, and John, listening to the trouble, couldn’t just sit by and not offer to help a friend out. How hard could taking care of a couple of young children be, when he took care of Sherlock all the time? If anything, Mike’s kids would be less demanding of him than Sherlock was. 

They played a bit of cops-and-robbers upon Ian’s request. John didn’t much feel like playing cops-and-robbers when his life often felt like one big game of cops-and-robbers, but he didn’t want to upset Ian. And, once the game was over, he agreed with Anna that they could bake biscuits, as Anna had requested before the game had begun. 

He was just about to herd them both into the kitchen when the doorbell sounded. 

“Doorbell,” Anna informed him, helpfully. 

“That means someone’s here,” Ian added. 

“Yes.” John glanced at his watch. “But who could it be?” He peered out of the window to the side of the door, which revealed a familiar dashing wool coat and a head of unruly curls. He should have known. 

He swung the door open on Sherlock. 

“What are you doing here?” he asked. 

“I’m bored,” Sherlock said, as if that was an answer. Both Ian and Anna were looking up at him curiously, and he returned the look. “Are these the children?”

“Yes. The children I’m watching,” John reminded him, firmly. 

Sherlock seemed unimpressed. He looked back up at John. “I just remembered, pressing matter, I’m fairly sure the laundry down the end of Baker Street is conducting a gigantic fraud, we should go investigate.”

“What fraud?”

“I think its general existence is a fraud. You’re always complaining that their prices are highway robbery.”

“Yeah,” said John. “I’m _baby-sitting_.”

“When are you coming home?” Sherlock half-whined it. 

“When Mike and his wife get back. Go back to the flat—”

“It’s so _boring_ in the flat.” That was definitely a whine. Ian and Anna looked deeply enthralled by Sherlock’s skills. 

“Then don’t go back to the flat.”

Sherlock sniffed in displeasure. “What if I go off and get myself killed? I could stalk that prostitution ring, get a knife in my abdomen for all my trouble.” 

Ian and Anna were wide-eyed. 

“Not in front of the children,” John hissed at him. 

Sherlock seemed to remember their presence, leaned slightly closer to them, and pitched his voice a bit lower. “My intestines could fall right out into my _hands_ ,” he informed them. 

“Sherlock,” John said, sharply. 

“What are intestines?” Ian asked, his voice hushed with awe. 

Sherlock frowned. “How do you not know what intestines are? What are they teaching you in school?”

“He’s only five, Sherlock.”

“Five?” Sherlock sounded shocked. “He’s been alive five whole years, and he hasn’t learned what _intestines_ are yet?”

“Okay, Sherlock’s going home now, kids,” John announced, brightly, “say good night.”

“Can’t he stay?” Ian exclaimed, looking at John with great hope in his eyes. 

“Stay?” John echoed, blankly. 

“Stay!” Anna repeated, emphatically, finishing up with an urgent nodding of her head. 

“He feels left out,” Ian continued, wisely. “He’s lonely. He didn’t get to play cops-and-robbers.”

Sherlock stiffened, looking offended. “I do not feel ‘left out,’” he retorted, scathingly. “I don’t want to play cops-and-robbers anyway.”

There was something about the way he said it, petulant and young, and Sherlock frequently sounded that way, but just then, at that moment, John could envision Sherlock as a young boy, left out and lonely and never asked to play cops-and-robbers. A pang went through his chest. He suddenly wanted to reach for Sherlock, tell him that he was _definitely_ staying. 

Ian saved him the effort by saying, “We’re about to bake biscuits.”

“Yes, biscuits, yay!” was Anna’s enthusiastic commentary on that. 

“Biscuits,” said Sherlock, and he did look swayed by that, the uncertainty of his expression at odds with the dapper turned-up collar of his coat. “It’s true that I haven’t eaten.”

Anna and Ian looked, once again, astonished that such a being as Sherlock was in their presence. This was Sherlock’s favorite reaction to garner from people, so he preened a bit in their warm regard, as Ian said, “You can have biscuits for _dinner_?”

“Yes,” said Sherlock, firmly, stepping through the doorway. He slid out of his coat and stuck it in John’s arms and turned to Ian and Anna. “Are you any good at making biscuits?” he asked. “Because John’s rubbish at it.”

“Hey,” said John. 

“Well, you are. Ignore him, he has an inflated opinion of his own culinary skills.”

“You know,” inserted John, bitterly, “you could develop culinary skills of your own.”

“I’m busy developing other skills, John, I haven’t space in my brain for _food_. Food is boring.”

“Not biscuits,” said Anna, wisely. 

“What are culinary skills?” asked Ian, forming the words carefully. 

“Culinary,” said Sherlock. “From the Latin _culinarius_ , meaning ‘of the kitchen.’”

John sighed. “The things you know versus the things you don’t know never fail to surprise me.”

“Good,” said Sherlock. “Surprise is good.” And then he surprised him further by pressing a brief firm kiss to his mouth. 

John glanced at the kids to see if they were alarmed, but they didn’t seem the least bit interested. 

Sherlock walked past him and into the kitchen, looked around it, and said, confidently, “Ah. Your mother doesn’t like your grandmother _at all_.”

John tossed Sherlock’s coat over the nearest sofa and thought this all was going to be a disaster. 

***

It decidedly wasn’t. Sherlock displayed an unexpected interest in baking that John had never previously seen in him. 

“This is basically a science experiment,” he said. “No wonder you’re appalling at it, you are the messiest measurer I’ve ever seen, it’s why I don’t let you collect data for me.”

“You _make_ me collect data all the time,” John reminded him, even as Sherlock took the tablespoon out of his hand. 

The children clearly thought Sherlock was the most amazing thing they had ever seen. They gaped up at him as he mixed ingredients with the confidence with which he did everything, deducing away things about them, like Anna’s last visit from the Tooth Fairy, and Ian’s favorite type of car. They weren’t Sherlock’s most impressive deductions, but then, there wasn’t much to deduce about a couple of children, and the children were blown away by him. John, watching him, thought that he knew the feeling well. 

They sat around the kitchen table and nibbled on the biscuits. 

Sherlock said, abruptly, to Ian, “What happened at school?”

Ian looked at him, startled, a half-eaten biscuit in his hand. “W-what?”

“Something happened at school. Something concerning a pencil. A red pencil, if I’m not mistaken.”

Ian didn’t look happily astonished, the way he had with Sherlock’s previous deductions. He looked stricken and miserable. “How do you know about that?”

Sherlock didn’t answer right away. He munched thoughtfully on his biscuit. John glanced at him and finally decided he wasn’t going to respond and that John should explain it away for Ian. Just as he opened his mouth to do it, Sherlock abruptly leaned down so he could more firmly catch Ian’s eye. “Never listen to what people say about you. Especially not boys at school. Always remember all of the things you know that they don’t.”

John looked from Sherlock to Ian, who, after a wide-eyed moment, nodded. Sherlock nodded back, as if satisfied, and sat back in his chair. 

“Well,” announced John, clearing his throat. “I think it’s definitely time for bed.”

“Bed?” echoed Sherlock, in evident shock. 

“They’re _children_ , Sherlock,” John reminded him. 

“Will you tell us a bedtime story, Sherlock?” Ian asked, immediately. 

“Yes, Sherlock, please?” begged Anna. 

“A what?” Sherlock sounded as if he had no idea what they were talking about. 

“A bedtime story,” John said. “It’s a story that—”

“I know what it _is_ ,” Sherlock snapped. 

“Good,” said John, and stood. “Then go tell them one.”

Sherlock looked at him in surprise, but John thought it sounded like a nice idea. Sherlock had a good story-telling voice, even if he did tend to rush things a bit, and God knew Sherlock wasn’t going to wash the dishes, so John might as well do that while he put the children to bed. 

He rinsed off bowls and spoons of batter, listening to the murmur of Sherlock’s voice from Ian’s bedroom, where the three of them had settled on the bed. Eventually, the story must have ended, because the murmur ended, and John made tea and sat at the kitchen table to wait for Sherlock’s return. Except that Sherlock never returned, and John, curious as to what could be so silently happening in the bedroom, did a bit of investigating and found Sherlock sound asleep on the bed, a small child snuggled on each side of him. He looked bloody adorable, and John hated to disturb him, considering he wasn’t sure the last time Sherlock had slept, so he left them and went out to the lounge to watch telly. 

Sherlock trailed in an hour later, collapsed onto the sofa and, yawning, put his head in John’s lap. “Anna steals the duvet,” he mumbled. 

“ _You_ steal the duvet,” John told him. “Anna’s probably just giving you a run for your money. Unlike me. I just let you take it. That’s how fantastic I am.”

Sherlock replied with a snore, and John stroked a hand through his hair and let him sleep. 

***

Sherlock was in an exceptionally good mood, and John loved him like that, wished he could figure out how to always keep him that way. Actually, sex was pretty good at achieving the mood, John admitted, and God knew it was no hardship to decide, every once in a while, that what Sherlock Holmes needed was a day in bed. 

John woke from a doze on one of those days to find Sherlock sprawled next to him, naked and un-self-conscious, basking like a cat in the sunlight falling over the bed. His eyes were closed but there was a smile playing around his lips. 

John reached out and traced a finger along the bow of Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock kissed the pad of it absently. “Penny for your thoughts.”

“Children aren’t that difficult,” Sherlock answered, around a yawn. 

John blinked in surprise. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

“Well, they’re not. That baby-sitting thing was…a lark, really. Anybody could do _that_. People make such a big deal about it. Seems to me it’s the easiest thing in the world.”

“I suppose you think you’re an expert on children now. You spent three hours with two members of the species. Hardly a representative sample.”

Sherlock managed to shrug while lying down. “I don’t usually need much to become an expert, John.”

John sat up slowly, looking down at Sherlock. Sometimes Sherlock said things lightly that he meant intently. Like almost every time he brushed anywhere near his feelings for John. John wasn’t sure if they had ventured onto one of those moments. “Do you want to have a baby?”

Sherlock’s eyes were still closed. He replied almost sleepily. “I don’t have a uterus. I may be remarkable, but not _that_ remarkable.”

“No, I mean…We could adopt, I suppose.”

Sherlock’s eyes opened suddenly. The brightness of the sunlight in the room washed them out, made them virtually translucent. “Do you want to adopt a baby?”

“I never really thought about it. I’ve never really thought our lifestyle was conducive to…But I suppose if you wanted to…”

Sherlock looked thoughtful, which was more than John would ever have predicted Sherlock would look if he’d thought of bringing this up before. “I don’t think so.” He shifted, rolling onto his side, pulling John back down to lie next to him. “I’m not bored yet.”

“I’m hoping you never get bored.”

“I mean that I like this, all of this, the way it is. If I were bored of any of this, if it had ceased being…Then maybe a baby would be an adventure.”

John stared at him, considering. “You know, I think you’d actually be quite good at it.”

“Of course I would,” said Sherlock, in his _I’m good at everything_ tone of voice. 

“You’re bloody irritating,” John informed him. 

“Yeah, but I did get your belt off with just my teeth,” Sherlock responded, smug. 

“That was a fluke,” said John. 

“Flukes,” Sherlock told him, “are my favorite things.”


End file.
